1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of e-commerce and natural language processing, more particularly, to populating an e-commerce shopping cart and/or other e-commerce fields based upon content contained in natural language input.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic commerce or e-commerce relates to the conducting of business communication and transactions over networks and through computers. More specifically, e-commerce includes a buying and selling of goods and services and transferring funds using digital communications and often automated systems. Online shopping is one type of e-commerce transaction, which involves a shopper accessing a Web site linked to a commerce server. Shopper-to-commerce server transactions are not limited to Web based ones but also include telephone based transactions (e.g., Interactive Voice Response transactions), e-commerce transactions, chat based transactions, e-mail based transactions, fax based transactions, and the like.
Conventional e-commerce shopping is conducted as one or more directed transactions between a shopper and an automated system. A shopper typically browses through a catalogue of available items or uses a database search control to search the catalogue based upon shopper provided criteria. A shopper can select items of interest and can add them to an electronic shopping cart. Once shopping is completed, the shopper can opt to proceed to a check-out stage, where payment and shipping details can be provided and the shopping session can be finalized.
When a number of available items in the catalogue are large, shopping for a few items out of many thousands of items can be a very tedious task for shoppers. Often, a user is unable to locate a desired item, even though the commerce source being accessed may include that item. This can be especially true when the commerce source includes an amalgamation of items from many different merchant sources. For example, a shopper can interact with a “gateway” source (e.g., AMAZON.COM, SHOPZILLA.COM, and EBAY.COM) that links a shopper to multiple item sources.
Current approaches to help direct shoppers use guided shopping techniques, which are based upon customer preferences determined by questionnaire responses, customer purchase history, and other such criteria. Current guided shopping techniques are used to anticipate customer-desired items and are effectively a means for direct marketing or direct advertising.
No known e-commerce technology permits shoppers to conduct shopping transactions using free form input. Further, interactive modalities for automated commerce transactions have been traditionally limited to those modalities (e.g., online shopping via the Web) that lend themselves to catalogue-like interfaces. What is needed is a means to permit customers to conduct e-commerce transactions using free form input, such as natural language input, which is user-friendly interactive means that can be conducted over many different interactive modalities.